James Pittman: Welcome to Immigration Uncovered, the Docket Wise video podcast where we dive deep into the dynamic world of immigration law, shedding light on the latest developments, cutting edge practice management strategies, and the transformative impact of legal technology. I'm thrilled to be your host on this exciting journey as we empower immigration attorneys with invaluable insights and explore the intricate intersection of law and society. I have with me as my guest today, Reed Troutz. Reed is the director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Center for Practice and Professionalism. A very special guest. Reed, welcome. Thanks so much for joining me.

Reid Trautz: Thanks for inviting me, James. It's a pleasure to be here.

James Pittman: So Reed, what was your trajectory like professionally that led you to Ayla?

Reid Trautz: Sure. I practiced law for ten years in a family law firm. We did a lot of divorce, custody, that type of thing. But what really interested me was the business of practicing law. I was working to improve the firm's technology. Back in the day, this was when the word perfect ruled the world, right? It was a long time ago, but the processes and procedures and all those fascinated me. And that led me to take a position with the District of Columbia Bar to start a Practice Management advisory service with them, which I founded and ran for nine years. And then Ayla came calling and asked me to broaden that a bit and add ethics and pro bono and mentoring to that. So we formed the Practice and Professionalism Center that has all those components of professionalism. And then over the years, and in really about the last five years, one of those components is innovation and how lawyers not only practice today, but will be practicing tomorrow. And I've just enjoyed that journey immensely. As I say, the business of practicing law really fascinates me and uses my talents more than active practice.

James Pittman: Wonderful.

James Pittman: So Reed, on that note, as you said, your work involves improving legal businesses. So as the director of Alist Practice and Professionalism Center, could you elaborate on how the concept of innovation plays a role in that?

Reid Trautz: And this was a concept that we came to as well, and a lot of it flows from the work we did on the report on the future of immigration practice. We realized a number of things that really that the market hadn't changed a lot and that it needed to change. Consumers were changing, but lawyers were not. And as a result of that, we started to become more proactive in helping members understand more about innovation, adding education. We had an Innovation Task force that was around for a couple of years and developed that. And then more recently, we've really solidified that we have an Innovation and Technology committee we are working with more. We now have our Innovation and Technology Summit to educate members on what's going on, but also really to change the way we think in the marketplace. And that's rather than being passive and letting the marketplace change. And we react to it. We said let's engage on behalf of members to facilitate that innovation, to help facilitate the right changes in the marketplace, right. The changes that are good for lawyers and good for their clients. And that's something we've been advocating and working on ever since.

James Pittman: Wonderful.

James Pittman: So let's dive right in. So with your role in a list future of Immigration Practice Task Force, what are the primary challenges and opportunities that you've identified for immigration practitioners in the coming years? And how do you see the legal landscape evolving in the near future, especially in the field of immigration law?

Reid Trautz: So there are a number of challenges or actually market forces that are at work, right. Consumers are changing, right. The way they're doing, probably. And certainly in immigration, none more than lawyers. Or that clients move from desktops computers to mobile devices. Right? That's how they choose to communicate. That's how they choose to do much of their work when they engage lawyers. So we needed to address the changing consumerism. We needed to address the fact that the ethics rules, the rules that govern what we do as lawyers, right. That those have not really changed. And so how do we work and innovate within those rules? There were also just changes in technology, right? The advances in technology, even sort of mundane things, right? Look at how cheap document storage, look at how the availability of WiFi and the move to cloud computing have all been major impacts in other areas of commerce. It wasn't so much in law, although I think we've done a good job as a profession catching up to a lot of those technology changes. And so that's really what we've been trying to help members with those challenges. And they're going to continue on. Those are going to continue in the future as technology evolves, it's learning new things in new ways. But we also think that that includes how legal services are actually delivered. Can we become more automated? Can we do things? Can we outsource some of our those are more recent changes than some of the others I've mentioned.

James Pittman: Well, let's drill down on the technology piece a little bit. So you've been a prominent voice on law practice technology. What are some of the emerging technologies that immigration lawyers should consider adopting to enhance their practice?

Reid Trautz: The big gorilla in the room right now, of course, is generative AI, artificial intelligence. Right? And everybody wants to know about that. They're not sure they're going to use it, but I think that's going to have profound changes on the profession over the next few years. But we're also seeing practice automation, right? How can you take some of the labor, some of the workload out of the process and automate that so that someone doesn't have to do it, right. That a computer does it or it's automated. And we're seeing examples of that in quite a number of places. The one I like a lot is automating a client intake process so that clients have information before they come in the office. They've paid their bill before they come in the office. Maybe they're vetted a little bit, a conflict check might be done before they come in the office. All automated based on maybe a form they fill out online. Maybe they're sent a link in the initial email and they can pay for their consultation online so someone doesn't have to take that payment when they walk in the door. Right. So going digital for many of the things that we do. I think that's really the challenge for lawyers in the coming years is to automate some of those processes and their legal processes too. Not only that, but they're legal processes, but the business process, the ones that are client facing and that clients want to be able to do too. It wasn't too many years ago that people said, I don't like to do that. I'd rather call somebody on the phone. That's changed. They're now willing to use technology and not even talk to a person, say to schedule an appointment to get a text, to remind you to come to an appointment rather than getting a phone call from someone. Right. That's the marketplace changing and lawyers need to be able to change with it for the benefit of themselves and their clients.

James Pittman: Truly as society at large acclimates to the changes in technology and the different ways of communicating with each other, it's seeped into the legal profession and lawyers have to stay abreast and meet clients where they are. And meet clients where they are. Exactly.

James Pittman: One of the best places to find out all about these emerging technologies is the American Bar Association Aba Tech Show. That's a very significant event, and you were a past chair of that event. So what impact do you believe events like the Tech Show have on fostering innovation and collaboration among know for many years?

Reid Trautz: As lawyers, we get together in our substance of practice area and we talk about changes in immigration law or real estate law or whatever our practice area is. But the thing about the Aba Tech Show is it was getting lawyers together to talk about technology in their practice. What's going on? How do I need to catch up? How do I need to stay up on technology? And as we all know from these conferences, it isn't just the substantive sessions. It's the networking, it's talking to people. It's learning from the people who are also attending. It's learning on the exhibit floor from all the exhibitors, the vendors, the people who have the technology. And that's what I love about the Aba. Tech show. I still go every year. Last year was my 20th year attending and I like that. And one of the things that we've done as a result of that is ayla has created their own technology and Innovation Summit that we do every other year. Now. It's coming up in October in San Francisco. But those are the types of events that not only help educate lawyers, but collectively as a group, the attendees then take that information and share that out, and it helps change the profession. And I'm very pleased to have been a part of that.

James Pittman: Certainly our audience should check out the Aila Technology Summit, as Reed said, coming up end of October in San Francisco, and to be immediately followed, by the way, by the California Chapter Conference. So if you're attending one, you can stick around and attend the other.

James Pittman: Well, Reed, you wrote a column for Law Practice magazine, which was called Future Proofing. And in that column, you talked about a lot of insights which forward thinking practitioners should take into consideration. So do you want to talk about a few of the strategies that immigration lawyers can use to future proof their practices?

Reid Trautz: Very important. A lot of practice management and a lot of working on our business involves today. What's going on today? How can I solve problems that people have today? But the Innovation and Future Proofing is about looking down the road and saying, what changes can I make that are going to address some of these issues that we talked about earlier, right? Changing consumerism lawyer regulation, changing technology. And so I think some of those strategies are things like, well, kind of listen to our clients, talk to them. Where are they with technology? One of the debates, I think that's going on right now is that some immigration lawyers have clients that don't have a lot of technology that slows down the lawyer. It changes their way of doing business because some of their clients don't have technology. And maybe this is one of the debates, maybe one of the issues is lawyers ought to encourage all of their clients to meet a certain technological standard. Lawyers are not way ahead of the game, right? Asking our clients to have a certain level of technology is good for them. It's good for us, right? So it's listening to them. It's listening to maybe some of our more advanced clients and what technology do they want? What would it be easier for them? And that's all part of the client service process. It's anticipating, it's meeting their needs today, but anticipating a little bit down the road and saying, how can I create my business, my systems and processes in my business to fit those client needs? Right? That's what I'm in business to do, is to help people with immigration law. What are their expectations? So it's spending time, maybe having a few focus groups with good, close clients. Maybe it's doing some surveys at the end of client representation, quick online surveys, confidential ones that say, tell us how you liked your experience. What more could we do? How could we change it so that you're anticipating the needs in the marketplace, I think is one of the best ways, one of the great strategies for future proofing. The other thing is spend time looking at technology. And it may start with looking at your existing technology and saying, well, what do I have? How much of it are we using right? Are we training ourselves? Have we trained the staff? Have we done any training in the last year? How could we improve and expand our knowledge? So maybe the tools we already have have the tools we need to meet the client needs. We just haven't investigated them. So I would be looking at technology. As I say, I love technology conferences because you can learn from others, not just those speaking up on the podium, but how do you do it? And that's what I would do. And then also I would look at staff. Staff is a key part of any success of a law practice and making those changes. Do I have a champion within the staff that can help the firm do this? Who can do buy in, who can help train other members of the staff? Those are kind of simple things to help us continue to move forward. Not just worry about the clients that we have and the problems we have today, but making sure we're spending enough time looking a couple of years down the road and saying, I need to be there at the right time with the right tools to help those clients that are going to need my services.

James Pittman: Read the point you just made about people not utilizing the capabilities of the tools that they already have. It's something that we hear again and again, and it's something that I emphasize.

James Pittman: But I want to talk about the book. I mean, going back a little bit. You were the author of a book. The title is The Busy Lawyer's Guide to Success. Essential Tips to Power Your Practice. Would you want to share with us some of the tips from the book that are particularly relevant for immigration lawyers?

Reid Trautz: Sure. I enjoyed writing that book. I was co author of a book with a good friend of mine, a lawyer up in Canada, and the idea was that tips are really small nuggets of information that can really inform and help make some changes to a practice. So we did a book, I don't know, I can't quite remember because it was a few years ago, but I think we had like 700 tips in the book. But there were things about client service, money, about lawyer wellness. So you made me go grab the only copy I have left of the book. And over the years I've sort of given them away. And Aba isn't selling it anymore, but it's talked about things like making sure you have systems to reply to emails and reply to phone calls. Those are key parts of any kind of client service. It's making sure clients understand and things like having a client handbook, right? Just something you can hand to the client or email to the client that maybe gives them a little more detail, or reiterates some of the things that might have been in the initial consultation. Just a variety of things. Kind of how to leave a voicemail message. Right. Sometimes people aren't cognizant of what kind of information do you need to do that. Selecting good clients, how to bring good clients in and turn down clients that may not really be good clients for you, and having the fortitude, especially when you're starting a practice, not to take every client that comes in the door. So it's a wide range of things, as I say, because from small nuggets come bigger ideas. And we say, oh, I do that. They read a tip, they say, I do that, but I could do it this way. And it really can make a big difference, especially in solo and small firm practices.

James Pittman: So you say the book is currently not being sold by Aba anymore, but do you have it in the form of an ebook? Is there somewhere that people can download it?

Reid Trautz: It is not presently available in that format, but we're working on maybe doing another edition of it and updating it.

James Pittman: Yes.

James Pittman: Ivrid in your experience shifting topics a little bit, how can immigration lawyers balance leveraging technology and yet maintaining a personal touch in their client know?

Reid Trautz: And that's always the issue, right? And it's finding that balance for your set of clients. It goes back to that issue about making sure one of the things we may want to do in our practice today is make sure that our clients are at a certain technology level and maybe turning down the people that are too advanced or too far behind. Right. Because they don't fit our business model, they don't fit our systems and processes. So it may take us much longer to represent them, or they may resent that we're not being quick enough or technologically forward enough. Right. So it's being cognizant that we want to maintain that personal touch, but we want to also have the technology. And I think if we all look at the marketplace today, whether that's getting a car service or buying movie tickets or getting some of our shopping done, more and more is being done digitally, right. So we know that that's where consumers are going. Legal consumers are doing the same thing. It's just sometimes we're not offering that level of technology to them. And so, again, it gets back to asking our clients the questions, how do they want to communicate and learning from their answers on these different things. How can we change and adapt our systems to meet the sweet spot of the consumers we want to represent?

James Pittman: We'll Reed legal ethics is a very important aspect of legal practice. Could you discuss some of the ethical considerations that immigration lawyers should keep in mind? Especially as they try to innovate. For example, do you have any insights on how lawyers can effectively innovate to better serve their target client base while staying compliant with ethical standards? And I also wanted to know if you had any thoughts on the duty of technological competence as it is a part of the ethical canon.

Reid Trautz: That's a big question. So what I like to say is really the ethics rules are they call them rules of conduct, right? They're really business rules outside of Rule 1.1 competency, which goes to our substantive knowledge. All the other rules are how we handle the work, right? How fast we have to work, how we have to keep our business records confidential, how we get paid, where that money goes before, after we earn it, who we can market to who we can't, right? So the rules that keep us kind of all in the same lane, delivering services the same way, so it makes a little harder to innovate. That doesn't mean innovation can't be done. It's just that we sometimes get a little scared of making those changes because we're not sure if we can go there. Right? So it's having a good ethical understanding of both, not only the rules, but of lawyer regulation today, what's happening in a particular state, who can practice law, who can't some of those things are changing. And so just spending a little more time learning about ethics will help people make those decisions to innovate, to maybe outsource things, hire somebody, maybe. I think a popular trend today is outsourcing. Some of the paralegal work offshore, right? And people have questions, is that ethical? What do I need to do? And there are special concerns, but it's not impossible or even that difficult, quite frankly, to be able to do that. But you have to, again, kind of apply the ethics rules like confidentiality. Confidentiality in another country may be totally different than what we view confidentiality here. And so we've got to take some extra precautions with the folks that are working offshore for us to be able to do that.

Reid Trautz: And that goes to the tech competence part of the question that you asked. We have to have a level of tech competence because technology is an important tool. It's how we get work done today. It's how more and more of our work is going to be getting done. So we have to know how is that technology not only helping us, but how can it possibly hurt us or harm us or clients and stay up on that competence? And I think one of the issues I have and I see is that a lot of times people aren't hiring good technology. They're relying on someone who maybe isn't a professional. They're trying to get help from a family member who may be good with technology but doesn't understand the law and understand the concerns of the legal profession and confidentiality. And I just think it's really good and important today that if you don't know about your technology, if you don't understand it, you get really qualified help and preferably someone who's familiar with the requirements within the legal profession. And those folks are out there. There's no question they're out there. But that's what I recommend is if you don't know that you're not sure of your competence, hire a consultant who can help you navigate those issues.

James Pittman: Most definitely. And those consultants are out there. I mean, just one example, the company Immigration Finder consultant who specializes in helping immigration lawyers build a technology stack and implement processes in their office.

James Pittman: Reed, let me ask you two sort of follow up questions. Do you think firms, when evaluating associates performance within paralegals, performance within the firm, should they have technological competence as one of the performance criteria? I think they should. What do you think that has evolved.

Reid Trautz: Too right as I go back 35 years in this profession now, the role of technology in a firm, the understanding of individual employees, whether that's a paralegal or a support staff or a lawyer, I think everybody should have a higher knowledge of technology. And I do think and this gets back to that AI question and it gets to others, associates who have knowledge and understanding and a passion for technology are going to be more valuable to the firm. They're going to help bring ideas into the firm. They're going to help drive the change. The younger lawyers who are and that's important to firms. We have to listen to those younger members who are tech informed. Right. But then we have to balance that because a lot of the younger lawyers aren't as familiar with the technology rules or the ethics rules that impact technology.

James Pittman: Well, Reed, about the ethics rules, let's talk a little bit. Do you have any thoughts on any potential reforms or changes to ethical rules that should be made to keep up with sort of where the technology is? For example, the advertising rules in the model professional rules pertain to lawyer advertising were from a time when print advertising was going to be the main form. Can you think of any areas that should be updated or reformed?

Reid Trautz: Well, I think the big one out there is the 5.4 rule 5.4 whether there can be non lawyer partners within law firms. Right. And that's what I think. The two leading states right now are Arizona, which basically got rid of theirs and says, yeah, you can have non lawyers. And then Utah, which has said, yeah, you can have non lawyers, but we're going to still regulate you and test this out in their, quote, regulatory sandbox. That to me is the biggest change, I think that small firms do not have the money to invest in technology. Big firms are investing a lot of money in technology. They're changing the way they practice. Small firms do not have that. So they're going to need infusions of capital to help build out their technology, to expand their technology. Whether that's done by bringing in tech partners, I'd like to explore that more often, but I just don't think small firms are going to be able to fully develop a lot of the technology that they'd like without having more of a technology partner in their firm. And that's one of the reasons is I think that's a role that Ayla and other bar associations can play. Right. Most of the lawyers in America are solo and small firm lawyers and they don't have the millions of dollars that some of the larger firms that are building out their technology and trying all new things and developing client specific products that will help them keep clients sticky, big corporate clients sticky for a long time. Who's doing that for the solo small firm market? I think that's where bar associations step in. That's where Ayla steps in to help facilitate in the marketplace. How can we make sure that there's the best technology and the best understanding of technology so that our members can make good decisions on the technology that they buy? And that's, I think, why we've become more active in helping facilitate all of that in the marketplace.

Reid Trautz: For immigration lawyers?

James Pittman: Well, it's super important both because, for example, in immigration law, the number of small practices far dwarfs the number of large practices. I mean, it is a practice area which has a high percentage of solos and small practices, that's for sure. So it's very important that they be competitive both for the good of the practitioners in succeeding in their practices, but also from the access to justice perspective. So what I think, and I'm sure you agree the smaller firms should be doing is utilizing the technology to be able to allow access to their services, to the immigration client base. So that is an imperative for small practices to do the very best that they can in terms of leveraging the technology to be more efficient and be able to compete and allow access to their services for as many clients as possible. Wouldn't you agree?

Reid Trautz: Yeah, there's a latent market there's. About 60% of the market is not getting the service of a lawyer right and so over half the marketplace isn't getting that service. How can we do that? We can do it by becoming more efficient so that in those cases we can lower the price, but maintain our profitability, be able to pay our bills and do all that right because we're lowering our labor costs through automation. I think that's a big key and will continue to be a big key in the coming years.

James Pittman: Agreed.

James Pittman: Well, Reed, we both know immigration law is a complex area of practice and it's very important to stay updated because the policies change, the regulations change. So what role do you see technology playing in facilitating immigration practitioners access to current laws and regulations and keeping up to date with the evolution in the practice area?

Reid Trautz: I think one of the biggest changes we've seen is the evolution of social media, right? To be a place where businesses and business owners, immigration lawyers, whatever, can use their communities, these social communities, to do that. So there's a lot of Facebook groups. WhatsApp groups? Places where you can go and ask a question, maybe get a response. Sometimes you don't get a response, sometimes it's maybe not the best response, right? So there has to be different layers, that's one layer of information, but there's other layers more and more through doing searches coming up, I do this myself, right? I do searches and find out an author of an article or something and say, okay, there's a good person I need to talk to, and then you reach out. So there's layers of that. Being able to attend a conference virtually, you can't make them to all the conferences in person, although that's my personal preference. But being able to drop in virtually on a conference or like an Ala roundtable, right, that connects you to people. Like we can't always leave our office and drive to a lunch. We can do that sometimes. But technology is really facilitating that transfer of information and that's kind of things we need to stay up on and continue to improve both on an individual level, but on a profession and association wide level.

James Pittman: And reed launching a law practice is a significant step.

James Pittman: What would be your best advice for aspiring immigration attorneys who are considered striking out on their own in today's know.

Reid Trautz: This is one of my favorite subjects and I've taught this at CLE's, a law around the country, different groups, right? Starting out, once you have a law license, there aren't a lot of startup costs for someone to go out and develop their own firm. And even in today's environment, that may be a little challenging because of the economy. But there's ways to find that business, to find that niche, to find that stream of business, to get you started, especially if you're going to innovate and do it a little differently than other people. But as I say, the cost to build the infrastructure to offer services compared to other businesses, we don't have to have an inventory, we don't have to have a brick and mortar location really anymore, although we can. So I still encourage people to do it. And here's why. If they find that they don't want to be their own boss, that they don't like it, they've already developed a book of business. Now they can take that and maybe merge with someone else that says, hey, I've got most of my book of business, but I'm happy to come into your firm and merge. You now have something more than just your legal knowledge to offer. And so I'm always encouraging people to try to do that. And that's one of the services that we. Offer at a low. We'll be that first level consultant, right. Where they talk to charity or to me, we can get them started, talk to them about some of the issues that they're going to face. But I'm a big fan of entrepreneurs.

James Pittman: It's interesting you mentioned merging after being a solo and then merging. That's one of, I think the really good developments that's happened in legal practice in the last number of years is that it used to be the case that if you left a firm, for example, and went out as a solo a while back, that was like a one way street. It was pretty hard to go in the reverse direction and go from being a solo to being part of a firm. But I think things have opened up and you now see people who have been solos going and then maybe becoming a judge or joining a firm or being up counsel to a firm. All sorts of things now are possible, and I think that's all for the good, the flexibility.

James Pittman: Well, Reed, as a nationally recognized authority on law practice management, you've spoken extensively about business process improvement. Do you have any favorite success stories or want to give us any examples where innovation and practice strategies led to really a notable improvement in the quality and profitability of a law firm's immigration practice?

Reid Trautz: Without maybe getting into exact specifics, I've got a couple of examples. I'm a big fan of office systems and procedures that are backed up by written policies. Right. A really successful business can go a long way if everybody's on the same page. Right. One of my favorite books that really got me going was The E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. He's done the Emyth attorney, co authored that number of years ago. And it's all about systems and processes. And a lot of times when I talk to lawyers and say, you know, here's what's going on in your practice, but you would benefit by really having these written policies, written processes, maybe streamlining a little bit of the cases you're taking so you're not taking a little bit of everything. And I'll hear back a year later where people go, my income just skyrocketed because now we weren't all over the place. We were much more efficient. Everybody knew what their role was. Right. And so that's one of my favorite ways to really create additional success within a law firm. The other one would be marketing. Right. A lot of lawyers do occasional marketing, shotgun marketing. The best marketing, in my view, is still the word of mouth. It's the lawyer referral. Lawyer is a personal referral business and always has been. And if you can make sure you've got a good client service system and that you remind your clients of who you are, they're going to tell their friends. And if people create even a halfway organized referral system like that, they're going to see their business increase. Now, that's not to say we don't go out and do social media and other things if that's what you want to do. But law is still a lawyer referral business, and that just will get you 80% of your business or more every time.

James Pittman: So, Reed, in your role as co chair of the Aba Law Practice Division Futures Initiative, what are the emerging trends that you believe are going to have the most profound impact on the future of legal practice? I mean, we've touched on a few of them, but let's kind of encapsulate.

Reid Trautz: Especially with regard to immigration, AI is really going to be and it is already working. Right. I know lawyers that are drafting letters, first drafts of a lot of things that they're going to submit to the government agencies. They're doing some of the research, but it's really, again, first level drafting. They got to modify them. But that's one of the things that's really happening. I think lawyers need to be ready for that. We're not replacing lawyers. Maybe we're taking some tasks away from younger associates that they might otherwise have done and learned that way. But this is a way we can reduce our costs another way. And I've watched this. It's evolving in this idea of chat bots, right? I mean, people say, oh, I have a chat bot on my website. No, I think we're going to go to paralegal chat bots where you send a link to your client and the computer asks them the questions and they verbalize it back to the client or back to the computer. And then that file gets sent and transmitted into text. And then where that goes back with the law office. It could go just to a paralegals file or it could go into your case management system. But we're going to see that this whole AI and talking to your computer, not keyboard inputting, is saving time, money, and the client could speak another language and the system can translate that back into English for a law firm. Right. I've seen that coming. There are some companies that are doing it, but even their technology and their approach, even though they're calling themselves legal chat bots, they're changing with the technology to deliver those. And I think that's where we're headed. So if I've got a client, EB one, I send them a questionnaire that's all virtual, all speaking. So I think that's where we're headed. That's one of the big changes we're seeing. And then this last one is, where are we working? Right. Remote technology. Right. We saw so many people leave the office for the pandemic. A lot of them were staying away post pandemic. But now we're seeing a trend where more and more firms are saying we need to get back in the office together. That's an interesting trend and I think some of that comes from the fact is we're not learning how to manage remotely. We're not learning and improving our systems remotely. We're saying, oh, we learned it during COVID We're not expanding that knowledge anymore. Oh, things aren't working so good. Come back to the office. And I don't think that's going to be a good strategy for a long term, positive workforce, but that's just my opinion.

James Pittman: Well, Reed, at the A level practice and Professionalism center. You provide management advisory services. So let's drill down on that a little bit. How do you actually collaborate with immigration lawyers to create and customize solutions that align with their unique challenges and goals?

Reid Trautz: So one of the services we've always offered is one on one consultations. We'll take about an hour to talk to members about their practice, what their issues are, learn a little bit about who are they representing or what their systems and process, how many people they have working for them, and then we'll talk to them about potential solutions. Right. We're not long term consultants, but we can help identify where we think some of the problems and issues are. As a result of that, we learn a lot where people are in the marketplace. So we write articles, we'll put on webinars or roundtables or offer sessions at conferences that are kind of based on this market information that we're picking up as we talk to members and what's going on in their practice, what are they comfortable with, what are they uncomfortable with. It all flows together. And as I say, we write articles so that people can then read those, share them with their colleagues, share them with others on their staff so that it's really a full educational component system to answer questions and get people on the path to solutions.

James Pittman: Let's talk about the delivery of legal services. You've mentioned that that's a particular area of interest. I mean, we've seen in recent times the creation of platforms like Rocket Lawyer and Legal Zoom and other platforms and legal services are being delivered in different ways that were previously unthought of or not thought of. What's your advice to immigration lawyers to ensure that they remain adaptable and responsive to changing client expectations?

Reid Trautz: I think one of the difficulties is staying adaptable. Right. We get so busy in our practice. We're trying to deal with and deal with the clients today and help them and resolve their solutions, resolve some of the things that we may have going on within the law firm. On the business side of things, it's hard to try to focus. So I try to encourage that the firm appoint really a Chief technology Officer or a chief innovation officer, someone who's going to help keep the firm moving forward even when everything is busy. And that can't always be the firm owner, right? It could be a younger member. It could be someone who's passionate about technology. But we want to keep the firm moving forward. Having quarterly meetings that specifically address how are we doing, are we making changes? Are clients complaining that we haven't added some feature or created some mechanism to communicate with them. How are we doing? And it's just always being open to that. And as I say, it's tough to do that, but otherwise we're going to be left behind. Right. The firm isn't going to be meeting the needs of clients. And I know there's new delivery systems. We've got other companies out there that are doing that. I'd like to see firms being a little more like that. Can we make more of our data input, more client facing, so that they're doing some of the work? That's what I think Chat Bots will help do. Right. So I don't have someone doing all the input and listening on a phone line. I can just send that out and back. Right. It's reducing those labor costs on things that aren't as that I don't necessarily need a personal touch. If I'm delivering bad news, I want a personal touch. But if I'm just trying to get their work done, I don't have to have quite that human interaction all the time.

James Pittman: What are your thoughts on unbundled legal services? I mean, that's another one of the trends, is not a lawyer not providing start to finish representation, but sort of unbundling the services and helping the client with certain parts of the case. Do you think that's really a phenomenon which is going to continue to change the practice?

Reid Trautz: Personally, I like that UIR made some changes that allows lawyers to do that because I don't want a lawyer to be on the hook for five years waiting for a hearing to come around. I know a lot of lawyers say, wait a second, that's my client. That's how I'm going to have business in five years. And so there's a push and pull. Right. But lawyers have gotten used to this representation from cradle to grave, and I'm not sure that that really is the best model anymore. Right. We got to limit our liability. And I just think there's still going to be a lot of clients around. Clients are going to come back to who they know and trust. So even if I've signed a limited scope agreement and I put in one of the new E 60 or 61 forms, a client is probably not going to go somewhere else. They're going to come back to me because I already know them and we built up some level of trust. But I know it's going to be hard to convince a lot of lawyers to do that. I've already talked to some and they're like, no, I'm not going down that path. And that'll evolve, like, other things too.

James Pittman: Yeah, it'll evolve with regard to the economics of it and broader changes in the society and other things that are beyond any of our individual control. For sure. Well, Reed, collaborative learning is really important for innovation. I mean, people putting their heads together. So how can immigration attorneys, both within ala and in fora that are outside of Ala, engage with their colleagues to exchange ideas and stay updated on these industry trends.

Reid Trautz: I just think that staying on some of the listservs and the social media like Facebook Groups and others, right, to keep your ear to the ground, to learn. I think those are all the ways we do it. I think we come together at times, like we've said, aba Tech Show or the Tech Summit, because we build new relationships, we learn from meeting new people, and we find out, hey, this person's doing something that I want. To do, and that then maybe triggers a phone call or a Zoom meeting a month later to build up that relationship and share those ideas. I just think it's important for us to set aside some time just to know, hey, I know I talk to my colleagues about solving my clients problems. We do that all the time. But we have to set aside more time saying I need to help solving my problems. What's happening to me in practice? How can I improve the use of my technology? How can I get my staff to be more efficient and effective using the software they have? All that can be done if we take a little extra time and treat it like it's a client problem. Only for us, it's our problem and we feel more comfortable once we get a resolution.

James Pittman: We've talked about the balance between innovation and automation and maintaining a personal touch. How about the balance between innovation, automation and professionalism? Maintaining high standards and delivering high quality legal services, employing a chat bot and that sort of automation. I mean, is there a point at which we kind of have to make sure that we're ensuring that responses or automated responses that go out meet a certain quality standard? Do you think there's a balance that needs to be struck there and how to approach that issue? If so, yeah.

Reid Trautz: And our profession really is built on perfection, right? We don't as lawyers, right, want to make mistakes. We need to be able to still meet that standard. Maybe that's too high a standard. As I like to say, the rules of professional conduct are not rules of perfection, they're rules of reason. But we ourselves want to perfect it. Right? We want to be sure it's going to work before we try it. And that's good for a lawyer, right? Be sure. But that's not so great for an entrepreneur or business owner, right? Think of the tech world that does beta software and those things, right? They're testing things all the time. We should be able to adopt some of that and still have this level of professionalism. But it's hard for us as lawyers, I think, to really do that and talking through some of those issues with others. And that's part of the Aila education that we've had. We've done some panels at annual conference. We've got some articles, but it's people getting comfortable doing what they want to do, say, hey, I got this idea to innovate my practice. I'm just not sure. I think, as I said earlier, a lot of it's possible. It's just we're constrained by our knowledge of the rules of professional conduct. Let's continue to learn and expand and do that, because ultimately, if we can help represent more people, if we can expand who we can help at an affordable price, but at a profitable price for us, that's the goal, and that's what we all should be striving for.

James Pittman: Exactly. That is the goal that immigration lawyers should strive for. Very well said.

James Pittman: How do you envision the role of immigration lawyers in shaping policy discussions, particularly as new technology and innovation continues to emerge? And how should a members engage in the policy process?

Reid Trautz: Aila has, over the last couple of years, become more involved, but I will say more involved with the process side of things. Right. There's policy, which I view as more what happens to clients versus process, which is how do we get the applications, how are they processed, how do we do it? Are they done online? Are they done digitally? Right? And we're trying to engage more on that because that is important. Lawyers have been left out of the process. USCIS has gone out and digitized a lot of things. They just digitized it for the direct to consumer. They didn't think about adding lawyers. And we're trying to change that mindset. And we think we've done some, but we need to change their mindset to say, we sent a letter a couple of years ago, we said 25% of your applications come through Ala members and through the software like Docket Wise and others that process those applications. Yet there's no connection through the USCIS system. It's like they forgot us. And so we've been working to try to expand that and as I say, change their mindset. And they're realizing they built all this digital technology that nobody's using. And we Aila members say to them, because you didn't make it for us, if you made it more hospitable to us, we would use it. And that's kind of where I think we are right now. Hopefully we'll move those forward and there'll be more of a tie to the digital tie to our systems and their system.

James Pittman: That's a really important aspect of what you're doing, is engaging with the government agencies in order to open up the process and allow the clients, advocates, to have a role in the process of how they administer and how they adjudicate these applications, which affect our clients and affect society. Well, Reed, it's been a fascinating discussion and thanks for joining us.

James Pittman: Is there anything else that you would like to add? How can practitioners get a hold of you at the practice and Professionalism Center if they want to consult with you.

Reid Trautz: So they can go to the website ayla.org PPC and there's a link for consultations or they can email us directly Ppc@ayla.org, and we'll be happy to try to schedule something with people. But thank you for this opportunity. It's been a fun discussion from my point of view. Thank you.

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